Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian
Dear Friends,
Last night City Council and I received the great news that the City received a clean audit report for calendar year 2013. The report, presented by Ford, Scott and Associates contained no findings, and positively noted the City’s strong fund balance and a tax collection rate of over 99%. These items, along with our strong financial management practices, are the strengths that led to the City’s recent AA bond rating from Standard & Poor’s.
Earlier this week the City held a bond sale worth $17.9 million to permanently fund many of the capital projects that you have seen in the past two or three years, such as road paving, drainage improvements and park projects. The City received 40 bids from seven banks through a competitive online process. The bonds will be awarded to Janney Montgomery Scott LLC at a net interest cost of 2.25%. The recommendation to permanently fund more debt this year is based on the fact that interest rates are very favorable now. This sale represents an overall savings to the City’s debt service appropriations in the next several operating budgets, and an increased capacity to potentially add more projects to our already aggressive capital plan. It is important for me to recognize City Council and the City’s leadership team for proactively pursuing responsible debt management.
I would like to offer my thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Mr. Dick Grimes. Mr. Grimes passed away this past weekend, and he will be deeply missed by all of Ocean City. He was a role model, a hero and a true Ocean City champion, and someone I considered a dear friend.
I hope everyone has a great weekend.
Warm regards,
Jay A. Gillian
Mayor
